Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The road ahead

Ages since the last post ..a typical excuse would be the lack of time .. and without even digging too deep i know thats not really true .. time ..there always is time ..the question is what are we doing with it.
i always loved the concept of time in India.. the same word "Kal" for yesterday and tomorrow ..does tell u something of the collective conscience of a nation and a lot about the philosophy of life .
When riding on a train..Delhi aa gayi .. is it delhi or is it the train who arrived .. a matter of a frame of reference and so it is with time .. a matter of whether you are riding the stream and watching the banks go by or are you the one on the banks watching the stream rush past.

What exactly did i set out to write .. i called it the road ahead .. and thus committed myself to a course of events where i stand up in the little boat of my life and try to look as far ahead as i can into the stream of time.
The question turns back upon itself .. which "Kal" am i looking at .. and then Time smiles up and asks ..are they really different .. or did the ancient indians really get it right??
'Now' the word by the time i have completed saying it is already gone into my past ...and the only proof that it existed is that chain of neural activations in my brain that remind me that I said it. So the present is that razors edge which is teetering somewhere between the point where the two 'kal' meet.
And there i go to seek the road ahead where it just means that the road ahead is just a continuation of my road traveled till now. the present has no existence in time it just is the decisions that we make that constitute our present .. that vibrant act of exercising all that makes us human, the right to choose .. that is all that the present is..every thing else is the past .. or is something that is awaiting a decision to become the past.



Saturday, February 21, 2009

More than words

Saying I love you
Is not the words I want to hear from you
Its not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldnt have to say that you love me
Cos Id already know

What would you do if my heart was torn in two
More than words to show you feel
That your love for me is real
What would you say if I took those words away
Then you couldnt make things new
Just by saying I love you

More than words

Now Ive tried to talk to you and make you understand
All you have to do is close your eyes
And just reach out your hands and touch me
Hold me close dont ever let me go
More than words is all I ever needed you to show
Then you wouldnt have to say that you love me
Cos Id already know

What would you do if my heart was torn in two
More than words to show you feel
That your love for me is real
What would you say if I took those words away
Then you couldnt make things new
Just by saying I love you

Saturday, February 14, 2009

The invention of Writing vs the Computer age

From the dialogues of Plato, in Phaedrus he describes a paragraph where king of all Egypt Thamus questions the god Thoth about the usefulness of each of his arts. amongst them they speak of writing and why it must be taught to all egyptians. 
There Thamus negates the virtues of writing thus 
You, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.

On reading this one can hardly not stop to wonder that something written so long ago somehow seems so absolutely apt in this age of computers and the World Wide Web where information is at the fingertips but knowledge is so hard to come by .